


Sleep Shifts

by Ripplestitchskein



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence, F/M, alternate outcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 03:03:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8516044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ripplestitchskein/pseuds/Ripplestitchskein
Summary: What if Emma and Killian were the ones to share a sleeping curse?Angst. Mild sexy times.





	

True love now is a post-it note stuck to a bathroom mirror, elaborate curling script declaring that she is beautiful one day, a vision the next.

  
It's breakfast waiting for her warm in the oven, always with freshly cut fruit on the counter, sometimes a bouquet of flowers, no doubt pilfered from Maurice’s shop in the dead of night, on the table.

  
She misses when it was warm lips pressed to her temple. A firm hand grasping her own, fingers responding to her touch, curling into the spaces between. She misses moans of satisfaction vibrating into the skin of her neck, and teeth tugging on the lobe of her ear.

  
She curls into him, sleeping and lost, a warm body with no warmth, and pretends the arm she tucks around herself draws her closer. Pretends his grip tightens on her hip as she shifts further into his space, breathing him in. Pretends he has just fallen asleep before her, that he’ll be there, smiling sleepily at her when she wakes.

  
He won't.

  
______

  
She looks so peaceful when he repositions her on the bed, arranging her limbs more comfortably than the awkward way she had collapsed after the curse took hold again. He tucks a tendril of hair behind her ear, a blanket under her chin, runs a finger down her cheek. He wants to kiss her forehead, shoulders itching from inaction, but he stops himself just in time.

  
He’d made that mistake once before, in the early days of their shared burden, a bump on his head from crashing into the bedside table, dead asleep, his reward for an automatic reflex, and a snarky text from Emma that just said “Seriously?” waiting for him on his phone when she woke him again.

  
What was once so natural, a symbol of love, kisses given to reassure, to reaffirm, to feel, are now perfunctory, something to lift a spell. A way to trade shifts as it were.

  
A kiss given to wake. A kiss given to sleep.

  
He misses feeling her kiss him back.

  
His “shifts” are mostly at night. Emma’s role as Sheriff and mother and Savior more crucial during the day and evenings. Storybrooke is a town that shuts down early after all. So she takes the day and he the night.

  
It reminds him of when he’d first arrived to the town, skulking in the dark, wandering the roofs and back alleys long after everyone else had gone to bed, drinking alone by the docks, just his flask and the lapping of the waves against wood for company.

  
Belle sleeps too lightly to walk the length of his ship’s deck, and patrons of The Rabbit Hole are not the company he prefers to keep any longer. He isn't apart of the rowdy tavern crowd, losing himself in liquor and women any longer. He craves a fire in the hearth of home, the smells of food and her vanilla scent in his nose.

  
It figures that the family he’s wanted,  
the family he’d found, would be forced to go about their lives in the light, while he wanders alone in the dark.

  
His days are filled with fire, his nights are filled with cold. Both are equally lonely.

  
______

  
She saves every note he leaves her. A Tupperware container stained orange from spaghetti sauce repurposed to hold the proof he still exists, the proof he still walks and talks and reads. That he still loves her despite never seeing her.

  
He leaves them everywhere, conversations in tiny colored squares. Innocuous sayings that would normally be spoken aloud. Thoughts he would, in times past, say around a grin, tongue pressed into his cheek, nudging her shoulder with his own. A winking scoundrel.

  
She can hear his voice in every elaborately written note. Hear every inflection and over enunciation as she peels them from the various surfaces he sticks them to.

  
A sneaky admonishment under the fruit bowl where she can practically see his eyebrow raising in skeptical disbelief that she actually took anything from it.

  
A simple “I Love You” stuck to her computer monitor at the station, prompting her to send him a text to remind him that while it's very sweet, he can't keep breaking into the station like that.

  
The worst part of it all though, is how guilty she feels for missing him. How bad she feels for the constant ache in her chest. People live like this everyday after all. Shift workers and people with multiple jobs, military families separated by time and distance, refugees leaving their families behind.

  
She's not special, they aren't unique.

  
But she can curl up with him in their shared bed, can smell his scent lingering in the halls when she wakes for the day, but she can never hear him speak in person, can never feel him kiss her back.

  
He's a ghost haunting her. Things moved around, jackets left on chairs, meals appearing out of nowhere, a movie left on the television and their couch still warm from his body. But she never sees him move those things, never sees him wear his jacket or cook those meals, the movies are not something they can share. He is a specter, a teasing hint and an unfulfilled promise.

 

  
_____

  
Emma prefers to text, his phone buzzing on the kitchen table, an absurd number of messages on the screen. He hasn't quite adopted the medium completely but he certainly tries more now, for her, for them, conversions in blocky letters on a tiny screen.

  
He cherishes every single one. He saves as many as he can, until the infernal thing tells him that “storage is full” and he has to pick and choose the ones he cherishes the most.

  
Complaints about the ridiculous people in town. Reminders that she loves him. What she had for lunch. Henry’s increasing infatuation with the Violet girl. Everyone is uniquely her, a voice in his head he wishes more than anything was in his ear.

  
He loves them all.

  
Sometimes he reads them lying next to her, breathing in her scent, pretends she is speaking them aloud.

  
But mostly when he pretends it's to imagine she's just busy. She's away. She's working or off on a mission, saving the day like she always does. He pretends it doesn't bother him. They’ve survived worse fates. Curses and deaths and separations.

  
He succeeds a lot of the time.

  
But sometimes he doesn't.

  
______

 

  
She's not sure who teaches him how to use the video camera, probably Henry if she had to guess. An ancient thing with actual tapes he setups in the spare room.

  
At first it's innocent, silly little videos where he tells her about his day and fiddled with the “device” for half of it, reads her his favorite news stories. Hers are more awkward she sure, never quite sure what to say, doing her best not to appear sad. She can tell he's doing the same.

  
Just seeing his face talking and laughing big as life on the television is better though. She presses her fingertips to the screen, to the crinkles next to his laughing eyes more than once. She cries over his laugh even more.

 

  
She still needs and she still wants and he is all too happy to help any way he can. The only way he can. She asks for something a bit more one day, a flirty text message gone too far, and he delivers, a tape left on the dresser, another post-it telling her to watch it in private, hoping she enjoys it. I love you. I miss you.

  
He’s in the armchair in the spare room, jacket gone, shirt undone, open and splayed out before her, the smooth expanse of his chest, the trail of hair leading down, down, down, to where he has taken himself in hand, moving with light rhythmic strokes, tongue pressed to his bottom lip, eyes glowing with devilish desire. Just for her.

  
“Alright Swan, now I want you to do exactly as I say. There’s a good girl.”

  
He gives her stilted, moaned, instructions from the TV set, harsh breaths filling the room, her own questing hands doing as she’s told, seeking out the place she needs him most until she is gasping and writhing on the couch.

  
His little encouragements spurn her on, rasping and hoarse as he works himself up.

  
She keeps the volume down low, can barely make him out over her own needy pants, but drinking in the sight of him stroking himself, the face he makes when he's about to come, head tossed back and neck taut is enough, and she is joining him, the sounds of his own groaning satisfaction and his own pleasure from the past pushing her over the edge in the present until she is gasping up at the ceiling of their living room, chest heaving, listening to his quiet, sated voice from the speakers.

  
“I love you Emma.”

  
______

 

  
The nights where he is forced to break their routine are the worst of all.

  
The nights where Emma is called to action, Regina and Charming pounding at the door. The town needs the Savior, there is villainy afoot once again and unfortunately a one handed pirate isn't nearly enough to face this foe, they can't do this without her. He can be spared.

  
She is a weapon more than a friend or a daughter in these moments and he resents that on her behalf more than he will ever say.

  
He wants to refuse, lips pursed together like a petulant child, but he knows Emma would never forgive him, knows that this is not his choice to make. She would want to protect everyone.

  
He feels like he is kissing her awake to die.

 

  
______

  
The post-its dwindle in number as the months stretch on. The texts gradually become more predictable, mundane, a routine more than a meaningful connection.

  
She let’s Henry stay up late on weekends to see him, presses for details over shared breakfast the next morning.

  
What did they do? How did he seem? Did they talk about her?

  
She wants to ask ridiculous things. About the facial expressions he made and about the way he pronounced certain words but she knows it's too much, too desperate, so she doesn’t.

  
Later, when it’s dark again and Henry has gone to bed, she lays on Killian’s chest, listens to the best of his heart, steady and sure, counts his slow and quiet breaths and she cries.

  
She pounds her fists on his chest, lets out broken rasping sobs, tears staining the fabric of his shirt.

  
“Wake up,” she says sharply, desperately. “ I know you can. Wake up. You said you’d never stop fighting so fight this.”

  
A whispered plea into the dusk, just before she presses her lips to his own once again.

  
“Please Killian come back to me.”

  
He does of course. He always does.

  
But she's not awake to see it.

  
_____

  
And then one night, a night like any other, some grand adventure gone on without him, some magical solution procured without his help, it's over.

  
He opens his eyes to jade green, to a blonde curtain of hair and the frightened, hopeful face of a woman he hasn't seen in person in what seems like forever.

  
“Swan?” He breathes out.

  
Her mouth opens and closes, eyes widening.

  
“Swan?” It’s a desperate laughing exclamation that comes out this time, his hand coming up to touch her, to feel her, frantically searching her face, to see her respond, to see her eyes and her smile, awake and alive and in person.

  
She lets out a sobbing laugh of her own, her head falling forward to his chest, shoulders shaking as she sobs and sobs his name, over and over, fingers clutching at his arms, delving into his hair.

  
“It’s me, it's me.” Broken babbles of affirmation, her hands grasping his face.

  
It is the most amazing thing he's felt in months. He lets out a broken plea between tear filled laughter.

  
“Please just kiss me back, love. I need you to kiss me back.”

  
And she does.

 

 

 

 


End file.
